Chapter Twenty. Peter Pienaar Goes to the Wars

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

This chapter is the tale that Peter told me - long after, sitting
beside a stove in the hotel at Bergen, where we were waiting for our
boat.

He climbed on the roof and shinned down the broken bricks of the
outer wall. The outbuilding we were lodged in abutted on a road, and
was outside the proper enceinte of the house. At ordinary times I
have no doubt there were sentries, but Sandy and Hussin had probably
managed to clear them off this end for a little. Anyhow he saw
nobody as he crossed the road and dived into the snowy fields.

He knew very well that he must do the job in the twelve hours of
darkness ahead of him. The immediate front of a battle is a bit too
public for anyone to lie hidden in by day, especially when two or
three feet of snow make everything kenspeckle. Now hurry in a job of
this kind was abhorrent to Peter's soul, for, like all Boers, his
tastes were for slowness and sureness, though he could hustle fast
enough when haste was needed. As he pushed through the winter fields
he reckoned up the things in his favour, and found the only one the
dirty weather. There was a high, gusty wind, blowing scuds of snow
but never coming to any great fall. The frost had gone, and the
lying snow was as soft as butter. That was all to the good, he
thought, for a clear, hard night would have been the devil.

The first bit was through farmlands, which were seamed with
little snow-filled water-furrows. Now and then would come a house
and a patch of fruit trees, but there was nobody abroad. The roads
were crowded enough, but Peter had no use for roads. I can picture
him swinging along with his bent back, stopping every now and then to
sniff and listen, alert for the foreknowledge of danger. When he
chose he could cover country like an antelope.

Soon he struck a big road full of transport. It was the road
from Erzerum to the Palantuken pass, and he waited his chance and
crossed it. After that the ground grew rough with boulders and
patches of thorn-trees, splendid cover where he could move fast
without worrying. Then he was pulled up suddenly on the bank of a
river. The map had warned him of it, but not that it would be so
big.

It was a torrent swollen with melting snow and rains in the
hills, and it was running fifty yards wide. Peter thought he could
have swum it, but he was very averse to a drenching. 'A wet man
makes too much noise,' he said, and besides, there was the off-chance
that the current would be too much for him. So he moved up stream to
look for a bridge.

In ten minutes he found one, a new-made thing of trestles, broad
enough to take transport wagons. It was guarded, for he heard the
tramp of a sentry, and as he pulled himself up the bank he observed a
couple of long wooden huts, obviously some kind of billets. These
were on the near side of the stream, about a dozen yards from the
bridge. A door stood open and a light showed in it, and from within
came the sound of voices. ... Peter had a sense of hearing like a
wild animal, and he could detect even from the confused gabble that
the voices were German.

As he lay and listened someone came over the bridge. It was an
officer, for the sentry saluted. The man disappeared in one of the
huts. Peter had struck the billets and repairing shop of a squad of
German sappers.

He was just going ruefully to retrace his steps and try to find
a good place to swim the stream when it struck him that the officer
who had passed him wore clothes very like his own. He, too, had had
a grey sweater and a Balaclava helmet, for even a German officer
ceases to be dressy on a mid-winter's night in Anatolia. The idea
came to Peter to walk boldly across the bridge and trust to the
sentry not seeing the difference.

He slipped round a corner of the hut and marched down the road.
The sentry was now at the far end, which was lucky, for if the worst
came to the worst he could throttle him. Peter, mimicking the stiff
German walk, swung past him, his head down as if to protect him from
the wind.

The man saluted. He did more, for he offered conversation. The
officer must have been a genial soul.

'It's a rough night, Captain,' he said in German. 'The wagons
are late. Pray God, Michael hasn't got a shell in his lot. They've
begun putting over some big ones.'

Peter grunted good night in German and strode on. He was just
leaving the road when he heard a great halloo behind him.

The real officer must have appeared on his heels, and the
sentry's doubts had been stirred. A whistle was blown, and, looking
back, Peter saw lanterns waving in the gale. They were coming out to
look for the duplicate.

He stood still for a second, and noticed the lights spreading
out south of the road. He was just about to dive off it on the north
side when he was aware of a difficulty. On that side a steep bank
fell to a ditch, and the bank beyond bounded a big flood. He could
see the dull ruffle of the water under the wind.

On the road itself he would soon be caught; south of it the
search was beginning; and the ditch itself was no place to hide, for
he saw a lantern moving up it. Peter dropped into it all the same
and made a plan. The side below the road was a little undercut and
very steep. He resolved to plaster himself against it, for he would
be hidden from the road, and a searcher in the ditch would not be
likely to explore the unbroken sides. It was always a maxim of
Peter's that the best hiding-place was the worst, the least obvious
to the minds of those who were looking for you.

He waited until the lights both in the road and the ditch came
nearer, and then he gripped the edge with his left hand, where some
stones gave him purchase, dug the toes of his boots into the wet soil
and stuck like a limpet. It needed some strength to keep the
position for long, but the muscles of his arms and legs were like
whipcord.

The searcher in the ditch soon got tired, for the place was very
wet, and joined his comrades on the road. They came along, running,
flashing the lanterns into the trench, and exploring all the
immediate countryside.

Then rose a noise of wheels and horses from the opposite
direction. Michael and the delayed wagons were approaching. They
dashed up at a great pace, driven wildly, and for one horrid second
Peter thought they were going to spill into the ditch at the very
spot where he was concealed. The wheels passed so close to the edge
that they almost grazed his fingers. Somebody shouted an order and
they pulled up a yard or two nearer the bridge. The others came up
and there was a consultation. Michael swore he had passed no one on
the road. 'That fool Hannus has seen a ghost,' said the officer
testily. 'It's too cold for this child's play.'

Hannus, almost in tears, repeated his tale. 'The man spoke to
me in good German,' he cried.

'Ghost or no ghost he is safe enough up the road,' said the
officer. 'Kind God, that was a big one!' He stopped and stared at a
shell-burst, for the bombardment from the east was growing
fiercer.

They stood discussing the fire for a minute and presently moved
off. Peter gave them two minutes' law and then clambered back to the
highway and set off along it at a run. The noise of the shelling and
the wind, together with the thick darkness, made it safe to hurry.

He left the road at the first chance and took to the broken
country. The ground was now rising towards a spur of the Palantuken,
on the far slope of which were the Turkish trenches. The night had
begun by being pretty nearly as black as pitch; even the smoke from
the shell explosions, which is often visible in darkness, could not
be seen. But as the wind blew the snow-clouds athwart the sky
patches of stars came out. Peter had a compass, but he didn't need
to use it, for he had a kind of 'feel' for landscape, a special sense
which is born in savages and can only be acquired after long
experience by the white man. I believe he could smell where the
north lay. He had settled roughly which part of the line he would
try, merely because of its nearness to the enemy. But he might see
reason to vary this, and as he moved he began to think that the
safest place was where the shelling was hottest. He didn't like the
notion, but it sounded sense.

Suddenly he began to puzzle over queer things in the ground,
and, as he had never seen big guns before, it took him a moment to
fix them. Presently one went off at his elbow with a roar like the
Last Day. These were Austrian howitzers - nothing over eight-inch, I
fancy, but to Peter they looked like leviathans. Here, too, he saw
for the first time a big and quite recent shell-hole, for the Russian
guns were searching out the position. He was so interested in it all
that he poked his nose where he shouldn't have been, and dropped
plump into the pit behind a gun-emplacement.

Gunners all the world over are the same - shy people, who hide
themselves in holes and hibernate and mortally dislike being
detected.

A gruff voice cried 'Wer da?' and a heavy hand seized his
neck.

Peter was ready with his story. He belonged to Michael's
wagon-team and had been left behind. He wanted to be told the way to
the sappers' camp. He was very apologetic, not to say obsequious.

'It is one of those Prussian swine from the Marta bridge,' said
a gunner. 'Land him a kick to teach him sense. Bear to your right,
manikin, and you will find a road. And have a care when you get
there, for the Russkoes are registering on it.'

Peter thanked them and bore off to the right. After that he
kept a wary eye on the howitzers, and was thankful when he got out of
their area on to the slopes up the hill. Here was the type of
country that was familiar to him, and he defied any Turk or Boche to
spot him among the scrub and boulders. He was getting on very well,
when once more, close to his ear, came a sound like the crack of
doom.

It was the field-guns now, and the sound of a field-gun close at
hand is bad for the nerves if you aren't expecting it. Peter thought
he had been hit, and lay flat for a little to consider. Then he
found the right explanation, and crawled forward very warily.

Presently he saw his first Russian shell. It dropped half a
dozen yards to his right, making a great hole in the snow and sending
up a mass of mixed earth, snow, and broken stones. Peter spat out
the dirt and felt very solemn. You must remember that never in his
life had he seen big shelling, and was now being landed in the thick
of a first-class show without any preparation. He said he felt cold
in his stomach, and very wishful to run away, if there had been
anywhere to run to. But he kept on to the crest of the ridge, over
which a big glow was broadening like sunrise. He tripped once over a
wire, which he took for some kind of snare, and after that went very
warily. By and by he got his face between two boulders and looked
over into the true battle-field.

He told me it was exactly what the predikant used to say that
Hell would be like. About fifty yards down the slope lay the Turkish
trenches - they were dark against the snow, and now and then a black
figure like a devil showed for an instant and disappeared. The Turks
clearly expected an infantry attack, for they were sending up calcium
rockets and Very flares. The Russians were battering their line and
spraying all the hinterland, not with shrapnel, but with good, solid
high-explosives. The place would be as bright as day for a moment,
all smothered in a scurry of smoke and snow and debris, and then a
black pall would fall on it, when only the thunder of the guns told
of the battle.

Peter felt very sick. He had not believed there could be so
much noise in the world, and the drums of his ears were splitting.
Now, for a man to whom courage is habitual, the taste of fear -
naked, utter fear - is a horrible thing. It seems to wash away all
his manhood. Peter lay on the crest, watching the shells burst, and
confident that any moment he might be a shattered remnant. He lay
and reasoned with himself, calling himself every name he could think
of, but conscious that nothing would get rid of that lump of ice
below his heart.

Then he could stand it no longer. He got up and ran for his
life.

But he ran forward.

It was the craziest performance. He went hell-for-leather over
a piece of ground which was being watered with H.E., but by the mercy
of heaven nothing hit him. He took some fearsome tosses in
shell-holes, but partly erect and partly on all fours he did the
fifty yards and tumbled into a Turkish trench right on top of a dead
man.

The contact with that body brought him to his senses. That men
could die at all seemed a comforting, homely thing after that
unnatural pandemonium. The next moment a crump took the parapet of
the trench some yards to his left, and he was half buried in an
avalanche.

He crawled out of that, pretty badly cut about the head. He was
quite cool now and thinking hard about his next step. There were men
all around him, sullen dark faces as he saw them when the flares went
up. They were manning the parapets and waiting tensely for something
else than the shelling. They paid no attention to him, for I fancy
in that trench units were pretty well mixed up, and under a bad
bombardment no one bothers about his neighbour. He found himself
free to move as he pleased. The ground of the trench was littered
with empty cartridge-cases, and there were many dead bodies.

The last shell, as I have said, had played havoc with the
parapet. In the next spell of darkness Peter crawled through the gap
and twisted among some snowy hillocks. He was no longer afraid of
shells, any more than he was afraid of a veld thunderstorm. But he
was wondering very hard how he should ever get to the Russians. The
Turks were behind him now, but there was the biggest danger in
front.

Then the artillery ceased. It was so sudden that he thought he
had gone deaf, and could hardly realize the blessed relief of it.
The wind, too, seemed to have fallen, or perhaps he was sheltered by
the lee of the hill. There were a lot of dead here also, and that he
couldn't understand, for they were new dead. Had the Turks attacked
and been driven back? When he had gone about thirty yards he stopped
to take his bearings. On the right were the ruins of a large
building set on fire by the guns. There was a blur of woods and the
debris of walls round it. Away to the left another hill ran out
farther to the east, and the place he was in seemed to be a kind of
cup between the spurs. just before him was a little ruined building,
with the sky seen through its rafters, for the smouldering ruin on
the right gave a certain light. He wondered if the Russian
firing-line lay there.

just then he heard voices - smothered voices - not a yard away
and apparently below the ground. He instantly jumped to what this
must mean. It was a Turkish trench - a communication trench. Peter
didn't know much about modern warfare, but he had read in the papers,
or heard from me, enough to make him draw the right moral. The fresh
dead pointed to the same conclusion. What he had got through were
the Turkish support trenches, not their firing-line. That was still
before him.

He didn't despair, for the rebound from panic had made him extra
courageous. He crawled forward, an inch at a time, taking no sort of
risk, and presently found himself looking at the parados of a trench.
Then he lay quiet to think out the next step.

The shelling had stopped, and there was that queer kind of peace
which falls sometimes on two armies not a quarter of a mile distant.
Peter said he could hear nothing but the far-off sighing of the wind.
There seemed to be no movement of any kind in the trench before him,
which ran through the ruined building. The light of the burning was
dying, and he could just make out the mound of earth a yard in front.
He began to feel hungry, and got out his packet of food and had a
swig at the brandy flask. That comforted him, and he felt a master
of his fate again. But the next step was not so easy. He must find
out what lay behind that mound of earth.

Suddenly a curious sound fell on his ears. It was so faint that
at first he doubted the evidence of his senses. Then as the wind
fell it came louder. It was exactly like some hollow piece of metal
being struck by a stick, musical and oddly resonant.

He concluded it was the wind blowing a branch of a tree against
an old boiler in the ruin before him. The trouble was that there was
scarcely enough wind now for that in this sheltered cup.

But as he listened he caught the note again. It was a bell, a
fallen bell, and the place before him must have been a chapel. He
remembered that an Armenian monastery had been marked on the big map,
and he guessed it was the burned building on his right.

The thought of a chapel and a bell gave him the notion of some
human agency. And then suddenly the notion was confirmed. The sound
was regular and concerted - dot, dash, dot - dash, dot, dot. The
branch of a tree and the wind may play strange pranks, but they do
not produce the longs and shorts of the Morse Code.

This was where Peter's intelligence work in the Boer War helped
him. He knew the Morse, he could read it, but he could make nothing
of the signalling. It was either in some special code or in a
strange language.

He lay still and did some calm thinking. There was a man in
front of him, a Turkish soldier, who was in the enemy's pay.
Therefore he could fraternize with him, for they were on the same
side. But how was he to approach him without getting shot in the
process? Again, how could a man send signals to the enemy from a
firing-line without being detected? Peter found an answer in the
strange configuration of the ground. He had not heard a sound until
he was a few yards from the place, and they would be inaudible to men
in the reserve trenches and even in the communication trenches. If
somebody moving up the latter caught the noise, it would be easy to
explain it naturally. But the wind blowing down the cup would carry
it far in the enemy's direction.

There remained the risk of being heard by those parallel with
the bell in the firing trenches. Peter concluded that that trench
must be very thinly held, probably only by a few observers, and the
nearest might be a dozen yards off. He had read about that being the
French fashion under a big bombardment.

The next thing was to find out how to make himself known to this
ally. He decided that the only way was to surprise him. He might
get shot, but he trusted to his strength and agility against a man
who was almost certainly wearied. When he had got him safe,
explanations might follow.

Peter was now enjoying himself hugely. If only those infernal
guns kept silent he would play out the game in the sober, decorous
way he loved. So very delicately he began to wriggle forward to
where the sound was.

The night was now as black as ink around him, and very quiet,
too, except for soughings of the dying gale. The snow had drifted a
little in the lee of the ruined walls, and Peter's progress was
naturally very slow. He could not afford to dislodge one ounce of
snow. Still the tinkling went on, now in greater volume. Peter was
in terror lest it should cease before he got his man.

Presently his hand clutched at empty space. He was on the lip
of the front trench. The sound was now a yard to his right, and with
infinite care he shifted his position. Now the bell was just below
him, and he felt the big rafter of the woodwork from which it had
fallen. He felt something else - a stretch of wire fixed in the
ground with the far end hanging in the void. That would be the spy's
explanation if anyone heard the sound and came seeking the cause.

Somewhere in the darkness before him and below was the man, not
a yard off. Peter remained very still, studying the situation. He
could not see, but he could feel the presence, and he was trying to
decide the relative position of the man and bell and their exact
distance from him. The thing was not so easy as it looked, for if he
jumped for where he believed the figure was, he might miss it and get
a bullet in the stomach. A man who played so risky a game was
probably handy with his firearms. Besides, if he should hit the
bell, he would make a hideous row and alarm the whole front.

Fate suddenly gave him the right chance. The unseen figure
stood up and moved a step, till his back was against the parados. He
actually brushed against Peter's elbow, who held his breath.

There is a catch that the Kaffirs have which would need several
diagrams to explain. It is partly a neck hold, and partly a
paralysing backward twist of the right arm, but if it is practised on
a man from behind, it locks him as sure as if he were handcuffed.
Peter slowly got his body raised and his knees drawn under him, and
reached for his prey.

He got him. A head was pulled backward over the edge of the
trench, and he felt in the air the motion of the left arm pawing
feebly but unable to reach behind.

'Be still,' whispered Peter in German; 'I mean you no harm. We
are friends of the same purpose. Do you speak German?' 'Nein,' said
a muffled voice.

'English?'

'Yes,' said the voice.

'Thank God,' said Peter. 'Then we can understand each other.
I've watched your notion of signalling, and a very good one it is.
I've got to get through to the Russian lines somehow before morning,
and I want you to help me. I'm English - a kind of English, so we're
on the same side. If I let go your neck, will you be good and talk
reasonably?'

The voice assented. Peter let go, and in the same instant
slipped to the side. The man wheeled round and flung out an arm but
gripped vacancy.

'Steady, friend,' said Peter; 'you mustn't play tricks with me
or I'll be angry.'

'Who are you? Who sent you?' asked the puzzled voice.

Peter had a happy thought. 'The Companions of the Rosy Hours,'
he said.

'Then are we friends indeed,' said the voice. 'Come out of the
darkness, friend, and I will do you no harm. I am a good Turk, and I
fought beside the English in Kordofan and learned their tongue. I
live only to see the ruin of Enver, who has beggared my family and
slain my twin brother. Therefore I serve the Muscov ghiaours.'

'I don't know what the Musky jaws are, but if you mean the
Russians I'm with you. I've got news for them which will make Enver
green. The question is, how I'm to get to them, and that is where
you shall help me, my friend.'

'How?'

'By playing that little tune of yours again. Tell them to
expect within the next half-hour a deserter with an important
message. Tell them, for God's sake, not to fire at anybody till
they've made certain it isn't me.'

The man took the blunt end of his bayonet and squatted beside
the bell. The first stroke brought out a clear, searching note which
floated down the valley. He struck three notes at slow intervals.
For all the world, Peter said, he was like a telegraph operator
calling up a station.

'Send the message in English,' said Peter.

'They may not understand it,' said the man. 'Then send it any
way you like. I trust you, for we are brothers.'

After ten minutes the man ceased and listened. From far away
came the sound of a trench-gong, the kind of thing they used on the
Western Front to give the gas-alarm.

'They say they will be ready,' he said. 'I cannot take down
messages in the darkness, but they have given me the signal which
means "Consent".'

'Come, that is pretty good,' said Peter. 'And now I must be
moving. You take a hint from me. When you hear big firing up to the
north get ready to beat a quick retreat, for it will be all up with
that city of yours. And tell your folk, too, that they're making a
bad mistake letting those fool Germans rule their land. Let them
hang Enver and his little friends, and we'll be happy once more.'

'May Satan receive his soul!' said the Turk. 'There is wire
before us, but I will show you a way through. The guns this evening
made many rents in it. But haste, for a working party may be here
presently to repair it. Remember there is much wire before the other
lines.'

Peter, with certain directions, found it pretty easy to make his
way through the entanglement. There was one bit which scraped a hole
in his back, but very soon he had come to the last posts and found
himself in open country. The place, he said, was a graveyard of the
unburied dead that smelt horribly as he crawled among them. He had
no inducements to delay, for he thought he could hear behind him the
movement of the Turkish working party, and was in terror that a flare
might reveal him and a volley accompany his retreat.

From one shell-hole to another he wormed his way, till he struck
an old ruinous communication trench which led in the right direction.
The Turks must have been forced back in the past week, and the
Russians were now in the evacuated trenches. The thing was half full
of water, but it gave Peter a feeling of safety, for it enabled him
to get his head below the level of the ground. Then it came to an
end and he found before him a forest of wire.

The Turk in his signal had mentioned half an hour, but Peter
thought it was nearer two hours before he got through that noxious
entanglement. Shelling had made little difference to it. The
uprights were all there, and the barbed strands seemed to touch the
ground. Remember, he had no wire-cutter; nothing but his bare hands.
Once again fear got hold of him. He felt caught in a net, with
monstrous vultures waiting to pounce on him from above. At any
moment a flare might go up and a dozen rifles find their mark. He
had altogether forgotten about the message which had been sent, for
no message could dissuade the ever-present death he felt around him.
It was, he said, like following an old lion into bush when there was
but one narrow way in, and no road out.

The guns began again - the Turkish guns from behind the ridge -
and a shell tore up the wire a short way before him. Under cover of
the burst he made good a few yards, leaving large portions of his
clothing in the strands. Then, quite suddenly, when hope had almost
died in his heart, he felt the ground rise steeply. He lay very
still, a star-rocket from the Turkish side lit up the place, and
there in front was a rampart with the points of bayonets showing
beyond it. It was the Russian hour for stand-to.

He raised his cramped limbs from the ground and shouted 'Friend!
English!'

A face looked down at him, and then the darkness again
descended.

'Friend,' he said hoarsely. 'English.'

He heard speech behind the parapet. An electric torch was
flashed on him for a second. A voice spoke, a friendly voice, and
the sound of it seemed to be telling him to come over.

He was now standing up, and as he got his hands on the parapet
he seemed to feel bayonets very near him. But the voice that spoke
was kindly, so with a heave he scrambled over and flopped into the
trench. Once more the electric torch was flashed, and revealed to
the eyes of the onlookers an indescribably dirty, lean, middle-aged
man with a bloody head, and scarcely a rag of shirt on his back. The
said man, seeing friendly faces around him, grinned cheerfully.

'That was a rough trek, friends,' he said; 'I want to see your
general pretty quick, for I've got a present for him.'

He was taken to an officer in a dug-out, who addressed him in
French, which he did not understand. But the sight of Stumm's plan
worked wonders. After that he was fairly bundled down communication
trenches and then over swampy fields to a farm among trees. There he
found staff officers, who looked at him and looked at his map, and
then put him on a horse and hurried him eastwards. At last he came
to a big ruined house, and was taken into a room which seemed to be
full of maps and generals.

The conclusion must be told in Peter's words.

'There was a big man sitting at a table drinking coffee, and
when I saw him my heart jumped out of my skin. For it was the man I
hunted with on the Pungwe in '98 - him whom the Kaffirs called
"Buck's Horn", because of his long curled moustaches. He was a
prince even then, and now he is a very great general. When I saw
him, I ran forward and gripped his hand and cried, "Hoe gat het,
Mynheer?" and he knew me and shouted in Dutch, "Damn, if it isn't old
Peter Pienaar!" Then he gave me coffee and ham and good bread, and he
looked at my map.

'"What is this?" he cried, growing red in the face.

'"It is the staff-map of one Stumm, a German skellum who
commands in yon city," I said.

'He looked at it close and read the markings, and then he read
the other paper which you gave me, Dick. And then he flung up his
arms and laughed. He took a loaf and tossed it into the air so that
it fell on the head of another general. He spoke to them in their
own tongue, and they, too, laughed, and one or two ran out as if on
some errand. I have never seen such merrymaking. They were clever
men, and knew the worth of what you gave me.

'Then he got to his feet and hugged me, all dirty as I was, and
kissed me on both cheeks.

' "Before God, Peter," he said, "you're the mightiest hunter
since Nimrod. You've often found me game, but never game so big as
this!"'